Murder, Inc.

The CIA under John F. Kennedy

About the Book

Late in his life, former president Lyndon B. Johnson told a reporter that he didn’t believe the Warren Commission’s finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President John F. Kennedy. Johnson thought Cuban president Fidel Castro was behind it. After all, Johnson said, Kennedy was running “a damned Murder, Inc., in the Caribbean,” giving Castro reason to retaliate.

Murder, Inc., tells the story of the CIA’s assassination operations under Kennedy up to his own assassination and beyond. James H. Johnston was a lawyer for the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975, which investigated and first reported on the Castro assassination plots and their relation to Kennedy’s murder. Johnston examines how the CIA steered the Warren Commission and later investigations away from connecting its own assassination operations to Kennedy’s murder. He also looks at the effect this strategy had on the Warren Commission’s conclusions that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and that there was no foreign conspiracy.

Sourced from in-depth research into the “secret files” declassified by the JFK Records Act and now stored in the National Archives and Records Administration, Murder, Inc. is the first book to narrate in detail the CIA’s plots against Castro and to delve into the question of why retaliation by Castro against Kennedy was not investigated.

Author Bio

James H. Johnston is a lawyer, writer, and historian in Washington, DC. He is the coauthor of The Recollections of Margaret Cabell Brown Loughborough: A Southern Woman’s Memories of Richmond, VA, and Washington, DC, in the Civil War and the author of From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, White House History, the Legal Times of Washington, American Lawyer, and the Maryland Historical Society Magazine.

Praise

“The Cold War is often celebrated as a great Western victory that was won without firing a shot. James Johnston’s extensive research and exceptional writing reminds us that a lot of shots were fired. This important story contains lots of lessons learned for Americans honest enough to read and remember its details.”—Bob Kerrey, former U.S. senator from Nebraska

“Many an author has entered the historical thicket that surrounds John F. Kennedy and his administration's adventures in Cuba. None, however, match James Johnston’s thoroughness of research, lucid writing, and balanced assessment of the president’s obsession and its haunting implications.”—Loch K. Johnson, author of Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability in the United States

“James Johnston offers a thorough analysis of the newly released JFK assassination papers. Readers may draw their own conclusions, but one lesson is clear: the American intelligence community must always strive to be transparent and maintain the public’s trust.”—David L. Boren, former U.S. senator and president emeritus of the University of Oklahoma